Lockpicking Now Required for Merchant Ship Crate Access

It really would have been nice to know about this change ahead of time. Pretty steamed at the moment that nothing was said about it. Could someone on the dev team at least clarify the amount of lockpicking required to unlock the boxes on the merchant, and presumably the pirate, ships now so we can figure out how to adjust yet another set of skills to cram it lockpicking? I always did the merchant ships with my miner/fisher/lumberjack/bard character. She does not have room to add lockpicking and I'll be damned if I'm going to drop more money in the Origin store just to get all of my fishers soulstones plus train up lockpicking.

Don't you guys ever think this crap through before you do it or do you just decide it makes sense and like to spring it on people?

I have enough trouble these days with lagginess. I don't appreciate having to start up a second client just to get my lockpicking character. I want to use my fisher and let her fish between finding merchant ships!!

This is a stupid, stupid unnecessary change and it's just crap that you guys don't even bother to mention it ahead of time so we could have given feedback about it. Now we're probably stuck with it forever.

This is the kind of unannounced change that makes me seriously want to just close my accounts and walk away. I can't believe this one. After all this time, why did you change it????? People barely use the cannons as it is now because it's such a pain to get saltpeter and to make black powder and now you just made it even more complicated.

Wow, it does seem like that's a pretty pointless change. If I remember correctly the chests barely have anything valuable in them anyways, why do we need to suddenly lock them to. "oh no, we're being boarded, lock the chest, we must protect our 100 gold pieces!"

Wow, it does seem like that's a pretty pointless change. If I remember correctly the chests barely have anything valuable in them anyways, why do we need to suddenly lock them to. "oh no, lock the chest, we must protect our 100 gold pieces!"

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The merchant ship loot is nice. But gee whiz, why make this change now, especially as an unannounced change that no one could give feedback about. I'm pretty mad right now. There is no way I'm going to buy soulstones for my fishers or just start sailing around with my lockpicking character instead hoping to find merchant ships. What the heck does she do while sailing around looking for ships? Stand on her head or something? At least using my fisher, she could fish and maybe get MIBs and nets, etc. This is just dumb.

You can log in and let your lp do it if they are friended to your ship... or if on another account Tina. Just have them onship loged out till you need them. Did you try the magery spell unlock?

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WHY SHOULD I NEED TO USE ANOTHER ACCOUNT NOW???? AFTER ALL THIS TIME???

STUPID CHANGE.

I can hardly move now half the time with just one client running, let alone having to run two.

If this stays in, I think I'm done because it shows the dev team doesn't give a damn and doesn't have the ability to think stuff through and get feedback from a broad base of players. If this was suggested by a focus group participant and they just went along with it because it sounded good, well then they'll pay for it by losing at least one customer.

UO has gotten extremely laggy for me since everything was moved to the cloud. As a result, I had to resort to relying on merchant ship loot to get barbed leather on a lot of shards. Mining for the saltpeter was time consuming and so was training up alchemy on shards where I didn't have it trained already but it was all doable with the damn lag. Now this change comes along and there's a good possibility it's going to be the straw that break's this camel's back because it makes absolutely no sense AND because no one could be bothered to ask for feedback about it. That's really the kicker.....no chance to give feedback. I refuse to buy soulstones and train lockpicking. Just not gonna do yet another template change especially for something like this that didn't seem to be a problem before the change. It makes no sense to me and I won't continue to support a company that makes such nonsensical decisions.

ProfessionalCampaign Patron

The merchant ship loot is nice. But gee whiz, why make this change now, especially as an unannounced change that no one could give feedback about. I'm pretty mad right now. There is no way I'm going to buy soulstones for my fishers or just start sailing around with my lockpicking character instead hoping to find merchant ships. What the heck does she do while sailing around looking for ships? Stand on her head or something? At least using my fisher, she could fish and maybe get MIBs and nets, etc. This is just dumb.

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Dev team needs a community manager that can communicate things better.

It is like pulling teeth to get them to answer even when reporting a bug.

I dont get why they try to sneak changes in...such as this and revealing in B.t. dungeon.

I understand that locked chests fits into the roleplay aspect of it, but they should have done it from the beginning, or not done it at all. It's like if they randomly decided to only let you lock down one item in your house every 30 minutes because your character is "tired and needs rest". Completely pointless, does not improve the game at all, and adds yet another layer of uneccesary complexity to the game that is already probably the most complex game in existance.

One would think the devs would have realized that people don't take kindly to unnanounced changes with no option for feedback, considering they have only done this 100+ times in the past and it's gotten the same "WTF" reaction from the community every time.

If this stays in, I really think I'm done. I've spent a lot of time fishing--ATTENDED AMONGST ALL THE SCRIPTERS--for over a year now because it was relaxing. So was the mining to get the saltpeter. I never had piles and piles of cannon ammo because it took so darn long to accumulate 2 or 3k of saltpeter to conver to the supplies to go after even just 5 or 6 galleons. I was looking forward to having even just 1 or 2k or 3k of barbed leather to eventually make suits with on the shards where I knew it would be a long, long time before I'd have a greater dragon and could go get barbed leather by killing dragons. Well, now all that is down the drain. I train up lockpicking the hard way, no tricks to it, no Twisted Weald. It's all dungeon chests from about 65 on and GGS gains. I really don't want to get all that done now too in order to just get barbed leather. It's been bad enough getting the fisher/miner/lumberjack and alchemist up to speed.

Oh well. I'm sure most people don't care because they're all sitting on billions and billions in gold and if they want the leather and ingot supplies that I so crave from the merchant ships, they just go buy up the stuff some scripter is selling. It makes me angry that now in order for me to get my own piddly little supply of barbed leather by following the rules and doing it all above board and with no cheating, no scripting, no shortcuts, I have to jump through a whole bunch more hoops. I'm just tired of it and I just don't think I'm going to do it anymore.

If Broadsword wants to make this so damn complicated, then fine. This player who has tried so hard for 10 years to follow the rules and never has scripted or cheated is done. Leave this game to the cheaters. Sticking around just isn't worth it if this is the way it's all going to go down.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

You can log in and let your lp do it if they are friended to your ship... or if on another account Tina. Just have them onship loged out till you need them. Did you try the magery spell unlock?

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So how would this work? You cannot enter a ship if you are not already in the party. (I tried this recently and could not pass the gate, which had been opened from the ships deck.) There is no such thing as the char or account based security like on houses or a friends list like for pets on ships.
Edit: may work, if you throw all security over board, but this isn't good on a loaded fisher boat either.
Even if leaving out the annoying fact, that a character, who is invited to enter one of the new ships to be my guest there, still cannot do this without High Seas booster on his account.

This publish on many fronts seems rushed and not thought out. I'm getting rather disappointed. This issue, thieves in Blackthorn's, even little details like having the new items in vendor search. The worse part is it will be forever before this kinda things get addressed and many will stay broken from here on out. If the publish is rushed, not thought out, has a lot pf polishing left to do... just keep it till it's ready. It's not a publish if it's not a quality publish. I get the feeling EA requires them to publish every six months or something and that publish is going out ready or not.

Stratics Veteran

This publish on many fronts seems rushed and not thought out. I'm getting rather disappointed. This issue, thieves in Blackthorn's, even little details like having the new items in vendor search. The worse part is it will be forever before this kinda things get addressed and many will stay broken from here on out. If the publish is rushed, not thought out, has a lot pf polishing left to do... just keep it till it's ready. It's not a publish if it's not a quality publish. I get the feeling EA requires them to publish every six months or something and that publish is going out ready or not.

So how would this work? You cannot enter a ship if you are not already in the party. (I tried this recently and could not pass the gate, which had been opened from the ships deck.) There is no such thing as the char or account based security like on houses or a friends list like for pets on ships.
Edit: may work, if you throw all security over board, but this isn't good on a loaded fisher boat either.
Even if leaving out the annoying fact, that a character, who is invited to enter one of the new ships to be my guest there, still cannot do this without High Seas booster on his account.

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After I found out last night on GL that the crates were locked and my fisher couldn't unlock them with the Unlock spell, I decided to get my character on another account who has GM lockpicking. I already had the security on the galleon set to allow guild members to access the ship, assuming they had a rune for it, could walk onto it, or a character on the galleon created a gate for it. However, my lockpicking character isn't in the same guild nor is the lockpicking character's guild allied with the fisher's guild. So I had to log on both the fisher who owns the galleon and the lockpick character at the house, gate to the ship with the fisher, and change the galleon's security to "public" so the lockpicking character could walk through the gate. Once the lockpicking character was on the galleon, my fisher used the context menu on the lockpicking character to recognize the lockpicking character in the galleon's access menu and gave her "captain"-level access to the galleon to make absolutely certain she could unlock the crates on the merchant ship. Then I changed the galleon's access to disallow public access at any level and made sure the lockpicker had a rune for the galleon. The lockpick character was never partied with the fisher.

If this stays in, then one thing people will have to remember is to not let the captain of the ship leave before the merchant ship is completely disabled. If you do, the merchant ship disengages their ship from the battle and takes off and it's a pain in the neck to get it contained again to keep firing at it. You can waste a lot of precious cannon ammo if you aren't adept at blocking the moving merchant ship before firing at it.

After stewing over this change before going to bed, I could probably accommodate the change if it's left in on a few shards where I already have lockpicking completely trained, but I'm not happy about now having to chase down merchant ships with characters from two different accounts or having to use soulstones to get it done or having to train lockpicking because I don't have it trained yet on a particular shard where fishing, mining, and alchemy are sufficiently done to get cannon ammo. I'm also very, very unhappy about how this was slipped in with no opportunity whatsoever to provide feedback.

Combined with the unceremonious, anti-climatic loss of factions; not being able to use my existing faction thieves in VvV because of the 100 "real" stealing skill requirement that requires me to redo all those characters also; the crappy loot in MIB and treasure chests that is apparently going to stay that way because so many people are sitting on so many MIBs and maps that the devs don't dare make that stuff worthwhile because it would unbalance the game; the loot items that have no properties because that's just the way the dice rolls; the anniversary gifts that would have been nice as a choice on a ticket amongst other choices but clearly aren't; Mesanna's response the other day that the EM program is doing just fine in lieu of more frequent global events for everyone, including people who can't make it to EM events.....I'm pretty bummed out these days.

Yeah, and I know 99% of you don't give a damn and are going to give me a ration of **** about it all day today because that's just what you enjoy doing. I'd tell you what I think of your trollish ways, but then the thread would get locked and you'd just sit there laughing about how you pulled off your little thread-locking stunt once again. I know you people have some kind of vendetta against me for speaking up about certain issues so you regularly decide I'm being an idiot if I try to make a stand about one of the few things I enjoy doing that isn't affecting you, the gold sellers, or the scripters in the slightest. Yippee for letting people voice their opinions in a 17-year-old game that's slowly fading away. Trolling and alienating people who still care enough to say something about it to try to make people understand what you care about in it and why is more important than trying to save the game or listen to legitimate feedback. So...troll on, all you haters. Or maybe you could just for once use your brain and actually make comments that are constructive and give ideas on how to solve a problem for someone who is struggling with a change. It requires a wee bit of empathy and compassion on your part, something you may not be used to demonstrating. But yeah, maybe you can pull it off just this once instead of gleefully jabbing away at someone who's upset about something.

I am with you on this one, Tina Small. I've said it several times already - they should concentrate on making the game more fun and worthwhile. Instead all we get is the nerf stick and more complexity.

Okay. Just putting it out there. Perhaps merchant ships were not meant to be solo'd. Maybe the devs want to encourage a little interaction, cooperation and teamwork. Perhaps this is a balance issue. Honestly, it shouldn't be that difficult to work around in my opinion. With multi clienting one can easily gate in an alt or switch characters and have it not take a very long amount of time.

Now I will say this; I'm not sure if they have updated the available loot or not but they should. You know, add new liquors, perhaps new items. Keep the whole merchant / pirate thing fresh and interesting.

The locked box thing though, seems like it can be easily worked around.

Stratics Veteran

If they wanted to encourage a little cooperation or team work, they would have a better grouping system, better chat system and more abilities like the bard songs.

No offense, but most of your post is just garbage. Why should someone HAVE to multi-client? Not everyone has computers that handle that well, PLUS it IS NOT a supported option for playing. And why should people have to have multiple accounts?

Making undocumented changes like this or the changing of the decay timers is nothing just complete incompetence.

Stratics Veteran

:gun: Was out pirating this morning and I scuttled the ship. As I went over though all of the chests on bard were locked. When did this happen? Or is this a change I just overlooked? Thanks to anyone who has info.

The link and quote above was from May 29 2013. I pirate quite a lot and once in a while the chests on merchant ships are locked. This was not always the case. There was a publish back then that changed a few things on merchant ships. The locked chests were one. Also the merchants no longer flag on you when you are attacking their ship. They just sit there and let you scuttle their boat. They do flag if you attack them directly, but cannons no longer cause damage to NPC's I guess.

I have not pirated since this new publish, so I can't say if the locked chests are still intermittent or not.

The link and quote above was from May 29 2013. I pirate quite a lot and once in a while the chests on merchant ships are locked. This was not always the case. There was a publish back then that changed a few things on merchant ships. The locked chests were one. Also the merchants no longer flag on you when you are attacking their ship. They just sit there and let you scuttle their boat. They do flag if you attack them directly, but cannons no longer cause damage to NPC's I guess.

I have not pirated since this new publish, so I can't say if the locked chests are still intermittent or not.

Tina, did you find multiple ships with locked chests or just the one?

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Just the one and all three were locked. I was too miffed and it was too late to do any more. But I will try another one in a bit and see if the results are the same. I suspect they will be, as the chests are not only locked but double-trapped as well, which sounds like what has happened to dungeon "spawning" chests too and perhaps also the barrels that spawn the small items like whips and wire.

Edited to add: Also, when trying to use Unlock spell on the merchant crates, my fisher got a message of something like, "You sense that the spell had no effect," or something like that. The merchant ship's hold was not locked, but all three of the crates on the deck were locked. I did not see anything new or different in the crates or the hold, just the usual leather, ingots, ore, refinement components, cannon supplies, liquor crate, and a white cloth dye tub (!). Also, my lockpicker with GM lockpicking failed to pick the locks immediately. She had to try a couple of times on the first one and I think the other two unlocked first try.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

It really would have been nice to know about this change ahead of time. Pretty steamed at the moment that nothing was said about it. Could someone on the dev team at least clarify the amount of lockpicking required to unlock the boxes on the merchant, and presumably the pirate, ships now so we can figure out how to adjust yet another set of skills to cram it lockpicking? I always did the merchant ships with my miner/fisher/lumberjack/bard character. She does not have room to add lockpicking and I'll be damned if I'm going to drop more money in the Origin store just to get all of my fishers soulstones plus train up lockpicking.

Don't you guys ever think this crap through before you do it or do you just decide it makes sense and like to spring it on people?

Grrrr.

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The THREE STACKED CHESTS on West Wall in LUNA CITY are LOCKED. Goof Grief, what on earth for? Also the Two Barrels in Cutlass Smithing in Buccaneer's Den are LOCKED. These are only a sample of what probably affects an incredible number of previously-always-open-lootable-containers.

Testing these TWO containers only, both on Atlantic Shard and Sonoma, I have found that a character with 100 Lock picking skill can open those locked chests and barrels easily. Also, a Mage with 100 skill can fire unlock/telekinesis, remove trap twice and still get poisoned but can get them opened. The BARRELS at Buc's Den will RELOCK automatically in a short time, then start SPAWNING USUAL LOOT of ore, wires, forged metal, tongs, and hammers. You can tell by the increasing weight of the barrels when new items are spawning in the barrels.

All of the above will probably apply to chests and barrels that previously have always been open.
But why did they lock the empty chests in Luna City Bank stacked on the West Wall? That serves no purpose.

I agree. Adding lockpicking skills to some characters is impossible. Next we will have to go fishing with two accounts open or have to bring another player along who has the lockpicking skill. Where is the fun in doing that for either player? I play a game to have some fun and, after playing this game for over 16 years, I am tired of rebuilding characters with new required skills. They've been burdening us with increased requirements for a long time. Take a breath and leave us be for awhile please, or give us MORE CHARACTER SLOTS. Thank you.

Not saying anything against what Jade of Sonoma is saying, but in a city like Luna I would find it much less of a problem that you need lockpicking. Plus I had no idea there was loot to be had. Thanks for mentioning that.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Not saying anything against what Jade of Sonoma is saying, but in a city like Luna I would find it much less of a problem that you need lockpicking. Plus I had no idea there was loot to be had. Thanks for mentioning that.

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There is no loot in those chests, just what people put in themselves, like unwanted BoDs and such, rather than cluttering up the floor.

It took a good 45-60 minutes of sailing around to find another merchant ship on GL to loot, but eventually I found one. (Tracking seemed to be "off" for at least part of the trip, as I could pass right next to players' ships and they weren't showing up on tracking.)

Damaged this one sufficiently to be able to get on board the merchant ship. Tied to open the chests and found that they were all locked. Once again, Unlock spell had no effect on them. Had to use the lockpicker to pick the locks and all the chests were double-trapped again as well. Doesn't really look like this was a sporadic incident of locked chests/crates.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Regardless, though, for the time being, can the locked crates be removed from the Merchant Ship ? How heavy are them ?
How about riding a beetle and putting the locked crates into a Beetle, bring them home and picking the lock in the nice comfort of one's own home?

Regardless, though, for the time being, can the locked crates be removed from the Merchant Ship ? How heavy are them ?
How about riding a beetle and putting the locked crates into a Beetle, bring them home and picking the lock in the nice comfort of one's own home?

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The crates you see in the pictures I posted above are permanently fixed to the ships. You can't pick them up. Which kind and how many you see of each type of crate/box/chest varies with each ship. Sometimes these crates/boxes/chests have crates or chests of liquor inside of them that you can remove, however, assuming you can get into the permanently-fixed crates, boxes, or chests.

Not sure how long you've been playing, but that's pretty much always how it goes if it's the right 1 person. Every single piece of gear in the game having incredibly complex properties and crafting being so complicated is because of one person who said he wanted UO "to be more WoW like" many years ago. Literally 90% of the community said they didn't want that, but because that one person wanted it, and was famous enough/powerful enough, the devs at that time changed the entire item system permanently.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Could be related to the one that happened to me. I clicked on the guard chest, the city one that gives you the rope and a poison trap went off poisoning me.

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Thank you Claudia-fjp for that information. I hope more players will add to the list of newly locked containers.

I am well aware of the fact that the three stacked chests in Luna City are not important. Nothing spawns in them of importance and players dump litter inside them all the time. So why were they locked in the first place? BUT _ _

The three stacked chests in Luna City Bank being locked, plus Barrels at Buc's Den are examples of locked containers whether or not they need to be. I didn't spend time last night to see where other locks are employed. I leave that up to everyone else to say where they have found locked containers that previously were open all the time. I can report where I see more later.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Hi. I found the unlock spell won't work for me on Atlantic because my magery on that character is only 90. My mage with 120 sure can use unlock on those chests on Sonoma. Have to use untrap telekinesis too. I'll go back and try that again on the Barrels in Buc's Den right now and make sure I am using the correct set of spells. brb

unlock twice, Remove Trap twice, Telekinesis twice ( each time message reads you set of a trap)

At first, I used unlock once on one barrel. Then clicked on that barrel twice and darts hit me each time because barrels were trapped. Then for the third time I click on the barrel and it poisoned me.
Then I could get inside and remove the items of wire etc.

Therefore: remove trap spell doesn't work. Telekinesis does work AFTER you open the chests/barrels with unlock spell.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

The three stacked chests in Luna City Bank being locked, plus Barrels at Buc's Den are examples of locked containers whether or not they need to be. I didn't spend time last night to see where other locks are employed. I leave that up to everyone else to say where they have found locked containers that previously were open all the time. I can report where I see more later.

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